am i just being irritable?
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at work we have this project (convert program i work on under UNIX from UNIX to windows), which i started work on. being a UNIX programmer, this is going to take me a while to do. so they assigned someone else (programmer B) to help me. now i am being told to read all of the code + specs and turn these into descriptions of the program. these descriptions must be very simple, yet also so complete that programmer B can write the windows version from these descriptions, without having to read any UNIX code. all suggestions that he should read the UNIX code himself are being ignored. apparently it is simply "my take on things" that i am not doing any windows programming. it is worth noting that programmer B is to do all GUI windows code. i know what this sounds like to me, but perhaps i am to close to this to be objective.
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at work we have this project (convert program i work on under UNIX from UNIX to windows), which i started work on. being a UNIX programmer, this is going to take me a while to do. so they assigned someone else (programmer B) to help me. now i am being told to read all of the code + specs and turn these into descriptions of the program. these descriptions must be very simple, yet also so complete that programmer B can write the windows version from these descriptions, without having to read any UNIX code. all suggestions that he should read the UNIX code himself are being ignored. apparently it is simply "my take on things" that i am not doing any windows programming. it is worth noting that programmer B is to do all GUI windows code. i know what this sounds like to me, but perhaps i am to close to this to be objective.
Sounds like an excellent chance for both of you to get some cross pollination of ideas, but only if you work together. You learn some Windows programming and the other guy can learn some Unix programming. Even if the other guy will never code for a Unix system the chance to see how another system works is excellent because ideas can be taken across, and vice versa.
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell The Second EuroCPian Event will be in Brussels on the 4th of September Can't manage to P/Invoke that Win32 API in .NET? Why not do interop the wiki way!
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at work we have this project (convert program i work on under UNIX from UNIX to windows), which i started work on. being a UNIX programmer, this is going to take me a while to do. so they assigned someone else (programmer B) to help me. now i am being told to read all of the code + specs and turn these into descriptions of the program. these descriptions must be very simple, yet also so complete that programmer B can write the windows version from these descriptions, without having to read any UNIX code. all suggestions that he should read the UNIX code himself are being ignored. apparently it is simply "my take on things" that i am not doing any windows programming. it is worth noting that programmer B is to do all GUI windows code. i know what this sounds like to me, but perhaps i am to close to this to be objective.
Well, the good thing about this is that there will effectively be a functional spec for the "new" (Windows) program. But it does seem like you've turned from programmer to requirements gatherer. :-D "Fish and guests stink in three days." - Benjamin Franlkin
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at work we have this project (convert program i work on under UNIX from UNIX to windows), which i started work on. being a UNIX programmer, this is going to take me a while to do. so they assigned someone else (programmer B) to help me. now i am being told to read all of the code + specs and turn these into descriptions of the program. these descriptions must be very simple, yet also so complete that programmer B can write the windows version from these descriptions, without having to read any UNIX code. all suggestions that he should read the UNIX code himself are being ignored. apparently it is simply "my take on things" that i am not doing any windows programming. it is worth noting that programmer B is to do all GUI windows code. i know what this sounds like to me, but perhaps i am to close to this to be objective.
feline_dracoform wrote: i know what this sounds like to me, but perhaps i am to close to this to be objective. Sounds to me like you may be surplus to requirements in a few months. feline_dracoform wrote: all suggestions that he should read the UNIX code himself are being ignored. Hmm. I take it you are not doing a line for line conversion then. feline_dracoform wrote: it is worth noting that programmer B is to do all GUI windows code. There is more to apps than Windows GUI code. Personally in situations like this, I prefer to blackbox up the existing code and provide a public interface for the Windows application to interact with. Therefore you don't end up with a complete rewrite. Because complete rewrites tend to reintroduce lots of bugs that have already been fixed. I'd be putting myself forward to build the business logic as blackbox components and let the monkey get on with the GUI code. :-D Michael CP Blog [^]
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at work we have this project (convert program i work on under UNIX from UNIX to windows), which i started work on. being a UNIX programmer, this is going to take me a while to do. so they assigned someone else (programmer B) to help me. now i am being told to read all of the code + specs and turn these into descriptions of the program. these descriptions must be very simple, yet also so complete that programmer B can write the windows version from these descriptions, without having to read any UNIX code. all suggestions that he should read the UNIX code himself are being ignored. apparently it is simply "my take on things" that i am not doing any windows programming. it is worth noting that programmer B is to do all GUI windows code. i know what this sounds like to me, but perhaps i am to close to this to be objective.
feline_dracoform wrote: these descriptions must be very simple, yet also so complete that programmer B can write the windows version from these descriptions, without having to read any UNIX code. Well, then... forgive me if my interpretation is wrong... but basically they're just asking for top down re-write. I guess if they just asked for that straight out, then I suppose that it would be more reasonable. Paul
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feline_dracoform wrote: i know what this sounds like to me, but perhaps i am to close to this to be objective. Sounds to me like you may be surplus to requirements in a few months. feline_dracoform wrote: all suggestions that he should read the UNIX code himself are being ignored. Hmm. I take it you are not doing a line for line conversion then. feline_dracoform wrote: it is worth noting that programmer B is to do all GUI windows code. There is more to apps than Windows GUI code. Personally in situations like this, I prefer to blackbox up the existing code and provide a public interface for the Windows application to interact with. Therefore you don't end up with a complete rewrite. Because complete rewrites tend to reintroduce lots of bugs that have already been fixed. I'd be putting myself forward to build the business logic as blackbox components and let the monkey get on with the GUI code. :-D Michael CP Blog [^]
Absolutely correct. However it does sound like there may be limited odds that anyone would listen to that discussion. I would definitely give it a go and if they don't listen I would definitely get ready to go... out the door.
"No matter where you go, there your are." - Buckaroo Banzai
-pete
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at work we have this project (convert program i work on under UNIX from UNIX to windows), which i started work on. being a UNIX programmer, this is going to take me a while to do. so they assigned someone else (programmer B) to help me. now i am being told to read all of the code + specs and turn these into descriptions of the program. these descriptions must be very simple, yet also so complete that programmer B can write the windows version from these descriptions, without having to read any UNIX code. all suggestions that he should read the UNIX code himself are being ignored. apparently it is simply "my take on things" that i am not doing any windows programming. it is worth noting that programmer B is to do all GUI windows code. i know what this sounds like to me, but perhaps i am to close to this to be objective.
feline_dracoform wrote: now i am being told to read all of the code + specs and turn these into descriptions of the program. This is a perfectly sensible requirement. Most code tends to be hard-to-read and poorly documented; Unix code perhaps more so then most, esp. from a Windows perspective. There's this shared culture thing in Unix (or any other platform, Windows included) that underlies al code written for that platform. Programmers will make assumptions about things that are perfectly logical within the cullture, but which make no sense outside it. ("man pages" are a classic Unix example; this phrase is meaningless to the rest of the world.) So bite the bullet and do your job. As it happens, that's wat I'm doing today too :')
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at work we have this project (convert program i work on under UNIX from UNIX to windows), which i started work on. being a UNIX programmer, this is going to take me a while to do. so they assigned someone else (programmer B) to help me. now i am being told to read all of the code + specs and turn these into descriptions of the program. these descriptions must be very simple, yet also so complete that programmer B can write the windows version from these descriptions, without having to read any UNIX code. all suggestions that he should read the UNIX code himself are being ignored. apparently it is simply "my take on things" that i am not doing any windows programming. it is worth noting that programmer B is to do all GUI windows code. i know what this sounds like to me, but perhaps i am to close to this to be objective.
many good answers here :) partly i just need to get this off my chest. an interesting bit of background for you all, programmer B programmed our UNIX system for about 9 years... he shouldn't need my help understanding normal UNIX code :| i have concluded we speak different languages :sigh: during a recent conversation i asked: "so, you want to know what happens to the database fields?" to which he replied: "no, i want to know about the variables" i never worked out quite why he wanted variables, when he didn't want sudo code or real code *puzzled* he doesn't want any state diagrams, but he does want to know what the databases look like before and after. i thought that state diagrams would have covered this quite nicely myself :confused: i gave up trying to work out how to do this without mentioning database fields :| i have decided work is like tetris. you put the bits together, then the results vanish without trace. i need to stop hanging on to the results of my actions, otherwise it gets depressing.
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many good answers here :) partly i just need to get this off my chest. an interesting bit of background for you all, programmer B programmed our UNIX system for about 9 years... he shouldn't need my help understanding normal UNIX code :| i have concluded we speak different languages :sigh: during a recent conversation i asked: "so, you want to know what happens to the database fields?" to which he replied: "no, i want to know about the variables" i never worked out quite why he wanted variables, when he didn't want sudo code or real code *puzzled* he doesn't want any state diagrams, but he does want to know what the databases look like before and after. i thought that state diagrams would have covered this quite nicely myself :confused: i gave up trying to work out how to do this without mentioning database fields :| i have decided work is like tetris. you put the bits together, then the results vanish without trace. i need to stop hanging on to the results of my actions, otherwise it gets depressing.
It sounds like this guy doesn't have a clue. Rather than asking questions to try and understand how the UNIX application works, he's asking questions that force you to phrase the answers in the only terms he understands.
Software Zen:
delete this;